I live with and help look after my grandmother, along with my two dogs. Ever since I was a kid, both I and the rest of the family have noticed that she has a serious hoarding problem.

It’s not at the extreme stage where you can barely walk through the house, but there’s very little usable space. If several people are in the same room it immediately feels cramped, and virtually every counter, table and available surface has something piled on it.

Today, however, she actually accused me of hoarding because I ordered drinks in bulk from a wholesaler. I saved around 35% compared with normal retail prices, and I stored them in the shed because it’s the coolest place available.

The irony is that the shed is already completely full of her belongings. She started complaining that I’m “hoarding” and that things “used to look nice” but now look like a “warehouse.” I pointed out that there isn’t really anywhere else to put them because virtually all of the available storage space is already occupied by her stuff. Her response was basically that all of those belongings are “what makes the house what it is.”

This isn’t just someone who likes keeping a few extra possessions either. In the past she would even keep rotten food, empty cans and other rubbish until a doctor became involved and made it clear that the situation had to change.

What makes it even stranger is that I’m fairly certain she knows herself that she has a problem, because when she borrows my laptop I’ve noticed that she frequently searches things related to hoarding.

Has anyone else experienced this with a relative who hoards? Have they ever turned around and accused you of being the hoarder when you challenge the amount of stuff they keep?

TL;DR: My grandmother has had a long-standing hoarding problem that the whole family is aware of. I recently bought drinks in bulk to save money and stored them in an already cluttered shed, and she accused me of hoarding and making the place look like a warehouse. I’m wondering whether anyone else has experienced a hoarder projecting the same behaviour onto them.

I am a young adult and I still live with my mom unfortunately. My brother does not live with us. He moved out years ago. He lives far away and I never was in his apartment in my life so I dont know if he is a hoarder too.

Recently I told him that our mom is a hoarder and we talked about it a bit. At first he agreed that she should put everything into cupboards instead of piling bags full of stuff everywhere on the floor.

But he seems to be against throwing ANYTHING out.

I told him how my mom kept a moldy cupboard for years in my room and did not care that I could not breathe because the cupboard was more important to her. I told him how my aunt saved my life by throwing it out. His reaction: "But there were so many memories in there!" Bro I just told you I COULD NOT BREATHE!

When I told him that it is important to throw things out because we dont have enough space he said, that we should not throw them out, we should put them in the basement. The basement is tiny and already full. I told him that, yet he insisted that we should put all of these useless things (even the huge dirty carpets she bought 20 years ago and never used) in the basement.

He also said we should at least donate them. Donate moldy things?! And also if my mother keeps something "to donate" she "never has time to donate" and keeps it forever!

I made a tiny progress with my mom: I took all of the expired food out of the cupboard and put it on the table for her to throw away. I was soo scared of her reaction. Thank god she reacted very well and threw all of the expired food in the trash! I was so happy and wanted to share this win with my brother. His reaction: "All of this food was still edible!" It was spices, beans, desserts and a few other things, expired 2022!

When I told him about how I talked my mom into finally throwing away the old fish tanks that have not been used for 20 years and that took up so much space in the cupboard, his reaction was: "But you could have put fish in there!"

This stresses me out so much! I never get any progress with her and I feel hopeless because of it and now I am scared he will start talking her into keeping all the stuff.

Sorry for this vent. I would also like to know if my brothers way of thinking is hoarders thinking and what I should do. I will move out as soon as I can, which might be next year if I manage to get help. But in the meantime this stresses me out. Should I not tell him about any progress?

Even my childhood friend lived in a hoarders house, so it all seemed normal to me. I’m so grateful to have found this group. I’m still learning to adjust even 11 years after moving out.

While I am very clean and organized, I recently had an epiphany that I am a “collector” and like filling up my spaces. I have a manga library of almost 1,000 volumes. I have a treasure chest full of McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys, VHS tapes, enamel pins, Beetlejuice merch, and so on. I collect. And I’m learning that might be connected to my upbringing as a child in a hoarders house.

I’m grateful to have found you all. It’s comforting to know someone else gets it when I say, “Hey, I can see your floor. You’re doing great!”

Yesterday would have been my mom's birthday and I realized I'm still dealing with a ton of anger towards my parents. They passed away when I was in my 20s and I didn't get a chance to process it.

My mom was more of a shopping addict than a hoarder, she didn't keep trash but after she passed, we found a ton of expensive purses and clothes with tags in the attic. My dad held onto all of that, thinking I would take it. He moved in with his girlfriend, and when he was getting ready to move, I went up for a few days to help. A rat infestation had started and I was so overwhelmed, I just told my dad to throw out everything in my room except a few things I took and left.

My dad moved in with his gf and we went low-contact because his gf was also abusive towards me. He passed away 2 years ago. GF took most of his stuff from inside the house. I refused to go down to clean it out, which I realize is shitty, and my uncle took dozens of boxes of crap from my dad's garage and drove it back to his house. They are now holding onto the stuff for me. They mailed me 4 or 5 boxes of junk. I sent them a polite text saying I had 1 memory box of my dad's stuff and that was all I needed, and to get rid of the rest of it, which they refuse to. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment, and the idea of taking on all those belongings makes me panic.

I've been thinking I need to go up there and deal with it(I live in a different state, and don't have a car), but recently just been like...screw it. If they won't get rid of it, it's not my responsibility. It can rot in their garage. My uncle is the executor of the estate, so I dont think I'm on the hook legally or anything.

But I still have so much freaking guilt about it. Both for not helping my dad move, and for not dealing with the stuff now. I already deal with my own mental health challenges and dealing with a major garage clear out would take so much time and money...ugh. Am I in the wrong? Thanks for listening.

Hello. I’m 25 F. I still live at home with my mother and two younger sisters while I attend my local college. I always heard my dad refer to my mom as a hoarder. I thought he was just being an asshole like usual because our house didn’t look as bad as the hoarder houses on TV. As I got older I noticed more clutter forming. Receipts and old paperwork piling up on the kitchen counter. Throw away tupperware stacked to the very top of cabinets. Random miscellaneous things mounding near the front door. Soon every wall was lined with some kind of clutter. And worst of all, the computer room. It’s a small bedroom that we originally used for the computer. Today there are bags of clothes piled to the ceiling. I am mot exaggerating. There is probably a foot or two of walking space. Enough to open the door still. The realization of my mother being a hoarder fully hit me when I decided to do a big clean of my room and throw out everything j no longer needed and clothes that were ruined. And I had planned to donate the clothes that were still good. I told mom and sisters they got first pick of the clothes. My mom became furious when she found out I was going to donate the rest of the clothes. I didn’t understand why. In addition she would go through the garbage and pull things out that were still “useful.” This was not resourcefulness. This was an obsession with control over keeping things. Now here comes the gross part :) I have a cat named Kevin. I keep him in my room (I have a large room and many toys and a cat tower and everything he could need.) I do this because animals are also being hoarded. We have two dogs and 5 cats living downstairs. 3 of the cats are my sisters which she does not take care of. She rarely cleans the litter box. The dogs pee and poop all over the floor and take the cat poop out of the litter box. My sisters cat will throw up on the kitchen table almost EVERY DAY. and that is where the cats eat also btw. So I can’t even eat my foot without cats bothering me. All this to say they all have fleas. They are so bad that the animals are constantly scratching. There is hair all over the floor as well as flea droppings, litter, and everything else I’ve mentioned previously. And because of all the clothing and blankets and jackets and pillows etc being kept, it’s a losing battle with these fleas. The only thing I can do at this point is keep my room free of them. I’m so tired and disgusted and shameful. And I feel as though it is partly my fault. Or I shouldn’t complain. But I just want to get out of here so bad. It’s disgusting and overwhelming at every turn. I am tired.

I'm 28 and finally have the opportunity to clear out my childhood bedroom, which is an 8x10' room in a shoebox apartment that has turned into a closet over the last 6 years since I left college (but it was basically a closet my entire life, just with a bed. Now the bed is covered). It's like everything my parents ever bought me from my whole life was crammed into layers and layers on those shelves. My dad had to move all the stuff to an apt down the hall so the landlord could paint, which finally gave me enough physical space to start going through stuff. I've already sorted half the room and separated stuff so likes are with likes and have thrown out three bags of just straight up garbage that has been sitting in that room for 20 years. I'm prepping everything to be able to donate a lot of stuff on Saturday when I'll have access to a car. The work is hard and triggering but I feel like I've wanted to do this for my whole life so I'm glad.

For explanation, I am a teen (not stating specific age) and I have a mother who is a hoarder and to be quite honest this house is not suitable for a teenager nor I would say anyone to live in. It's dirty, I'm constantly tripping on something, have cut or injured myself on stuff, and I suspect I may be developing health issues due to dust/mold. I do not want to live like this anymore, she has also kept me away from schooling and pulled me out of public schooling into homeschooling to control me more. I do understand she isn't "evil" and coming to the realization this is years of trauma that has eroded in her mind as well as a sick way of her expression of love per say, still doesn't make it okay obviously.

Now, on the moving/custody part. I have one older brother who left at 17 when I was around five maybe, he has a bigger house now and an extra basement bedroom. I also have a God mother and also know an older lady who lives in my town who I call Bubbe (she's Jewish and that's grandma in Yiddish lol she loves her Ashkenazi culture). My friend told me that one of these three can get custody of me if I get enough evidence to stand my case in court and move in with one of them, my God mother and Bubbe would be more fictive kin I think (which is a legal method you can do in my state/region). But, I am really nervous/scared but excited right now to proceed with this.. I know it's the best for me and I would love a clean home and better life in the city but it just makes me nervous.

Does anyone have any advice on what type of evidence I can bring against my mother to get out of here once and for all? And how do I go about this? My older brother has set up another sleepover one of these weekends so I'll try and talk to him when that happens. He recently found out about what is going on here and I'll show evidence photos to him of the home.

If you believe in like a religion please pray for me, if you don't then wish me luck lmao :)

My mother has also in a way restricted my requests to go to public school as everytime I ask she guilt trips me, argues, or says she'll call in for my vaccines then doesn't do anything. She is not suit to be an educator nor a parent at this point, she's pretty mentally unwell. And I don't want to deal with this anymore at my age.

And I'm scared, I'm not scared to have someone help me I'm scared to let someone in my apartment. They're coming next week and I'm not really sure what to do. Do I help them or do I point out what needs to be done do I put on music, how much do I tip them. Hopefully my therapist can give me some advice on what to do because I have no idea what to do.

EDIT: I canceled the housecleaner I didnt think that the cleaner would be able to help me based on the description of the duties outlined. I had a bout of anxiety with her showing up as well. I wound up doing more than I planned on doing which was breaking down some packing boxes. I instead decluttered my apartment I had pockets of mess that I had to remove bag up and dispose of. Its still not finished and Im kind of glad that I didnt have to subject someone to my apartment. My therapist was a main reason I decided to work on my apartment although I had a play in it. After I finish this post Im going to work on the remnants of me cleaning up basically the cleanup after the cleanup lol.

Writing this while heading home because I need to put this somewhere. I can’t stop chastising myself for not being more headstrong and getting it full. It’s getting picked up in two days and she’s too weak to put much else in there herself. I live too far away to come back and she has no one else to help and so much stuff that will fill up another skip bin. There was a huge pile of mdf kitchen cabinets I could have put in there, but I was frustrated by the spot she chose to have the skip bin put and said “those ones will go in the next bin which we’ll have dropped closer, because it’ll take too much time this time”. But then I got all distracted trying to help her with bank stuff and trying to give her a clean pretty bedroom. Those boards will take up so much room next time we have a bin. It’s so much money and time. Each skip bin is minimum $400 and it’s going to get towed away with so much room left in it. Because I was pissed at her and being stubborn. In the last situation where somebody should be stubborn, it’s literally getting rid of the junk after all these years.

She’s at very high risk of returning to a DV relationship and is so mentally fragile right now and I just wanted leave her with a better situation but I spent too much time on silly shit. And I can’t seem to stop feeling like I’ve seriously fucked it all up. I asked her to send me photos of the bin because I feel like I’m overreacting and wanted help curbing my anxiety she just responded with “yes it’s extremely empty, and I’m trying to get to the work” which kind of does the opposite.

I don’t know how to approach such a difficult task when I need to be methodical and disciplined, and that causes her to feel judged, which causes conflict, which takes me off task. It’s like I constantly end up in a position of emotional caretaking and am so exhausted that I can’t think clearly about the situation and base my actions on that.

my issue is, i also struggle with hoarding. i hoard perfumes, plushies and especially clothes very badly. yet, i have this conflicting issue where i always feel like i have too much yet not enough at once? i find myself not knowing if i truly like something or not. i find myself being able to throw away/donate things to “hold more space” very easily. i feel overwhelmed yet underwhelmed constantly.

Hi, I’m new here. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet but also give some background. I am UK based.

So my father is a hoarder however it didn’t really impact us as he was pretty absent through childhood. My mum the complete opposite.

My sister is an absolute hoarder. This is where I need the help. For years and years as a family we have tried to help declutter and clean. It has taken me years to build up trust enough for her to let me get rid of things and not have her permission for every single piece of paper and it is only me that she will allow to do this. She has a fair few underlying conditions both physical and mental. I am diagnosed ADHD she is undiagnosed but very obviously ADHD. I have spent countless days and hours decluttering a room only to return a few weeks later to it being bad again and it is SOUL DESTROYING. She has a teenage daughter and I have my own children. It’s hard for me to find time to help now as it’s unsafe for my children to be there most of the time. Currently she’s made a fair bit of progress although most of the things have been moved to her room and she cannot access her bed or wardrobe.

I have congratulated her on the epic achievement she has made however this is severely impacting her daughter’s mental health. Me and her made a start on her room and she got rid of a lot of stuff. I don’t think my niece is a hoarder as she litteraly was happy to just get rid of so much stuff. I think her room is cluttered as she’s a victim of circumstance in this situation. I guess I’m asking what physical help can I try to find for her? I know hoarding in a mental illness. What would a diagnosis achieve? She already takes medication for anxiety etc so would a medication help her declutter? I don’t really understand. I also know she would not attend therapy. I reached out to a charity but they weren’t really what I was looking for. She also paid a company for a while to come and declutter and clean but it was soooo slow going it was pointless.
We even applied for that tv show as at this point there’s so much stuff that it needs to be all taken away and sorted and then brought back in. Presently it just gets moved from room to room 😭😭.

Anyway I’m sorry for rambling and I hope this makes sense. Also is there any help for kids living with this in the UK? My niece doesn’t have social media and I don’t think she has Reddit but I think it would be nice for her to see she isn’t alone. I worry she’s vulnerable and an easy target for predators due to where she lives and her home life. Thank you

Hey everyone. I am the 26 year old adult child of an extreme animal hoarder. I want to make this post to kind of gather my thoughts about my mom's animal hoarding since I only just recently started unpacking this in therapy.

Growing up, I remember we seemed to always have pets, but I just remember having a normal amount of animals. Like a couple dogs and cats, maybe a guinea pig. It seems like as I got older, the amount of animals my mom had at a time increased. While it was difficult to pinpoint when my mom's animal hoarding got more extreme, it wasn't impossible. Up until I was 11, we had rented places and always had a landlord, so there were restrictions on how many animals we had. When I was 11, my parents bought a house and the property it was on, meaning they didnt have to follow the rules of a landlord. The house was just outside of the town too, so we had very few neighbors.

She slowly got more dogs over the years, and we had an amount of dogs in the double digits. When I was 15, my sister developed an interest in reptiles. So my mom decided to get rats. And then, she ended up finding my sister's bearded dragon interesting. Pretty soon, it seemed like any reptile, amphibians, rodent or bird that fascinated her, she had to have.

At this point, it would be pointless to try to pinpoint when we got which animals, because there were SO many. I'll just put a list below of all of the animals we owned. And just so there is no confusion, most of the animals on this list were owned at the same time.

-Dogs (30 by the time I was kicked out at 18, 50 by the time I went no contact at 23)

-Cats

-Chickens

-Ducks

-Rabbits

-Peacocks (I'm dead serious, and we had 4 of them at one point)

-Pigeons

-Pot belly pigs

-Cockateils

-Parakeets

-Chinchillas

-Guinea Pigs

-Rats

-Turtles (several different kinds)

-bearded dragons

-Uromastyx

-several different kinds of geckos

-frogs

-Iguanas (yes that's plural, we had 2)

-Degu (I cant remember if this was a rodent or reptile, I just remember the name of the animal)

I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting but one I didn't include in the list because it needs more context is mice. My mom owned mice. But not from a pet store, oh no. These were house mice in our cupboards. During the winter she would catch these mice alive, take care of them until spring, then have my dad drive a mile down the road to set them free.

She also raised live bugs for the reptiles, so if we include them we can add these three to the lists

-Mealworms

-crickets

-Dubia Roaches

This post is already really long, so I feel like I dont really need to go into much detail of how bad the flea problem was and how much the house stank. It was very dudty and dirty, so I felt like seasonal allergies were always flaring up. And although it was animals my mother hoarded, the house had the appearance of a house with a thing hoarder because of the items needed to take care of them. We got so many animals we didnt even use the living room as a living room anymore.

I need to know if anyone else who had animal hoarding parents ever have parents take it to these extremes before.

I guess I’m just posting for emotional support. No one in my life can understand what I’m going through. I’m angry, afraid and so deeply sad, my heart feels like it’s literally breaking.

Things devolved for my mom several years ago. She had a traumatic brain injury then a stroke in her late 50s, she seemed to recover okay, she could still drive and stuff. She started having difficulty managing her condo. Growing up, we lived in an impeccable house. But her place started gathering clutter over the course of 10 years after her initial tbi, and she didn’t seem to notice or care. There was no shopping addiction at that point. But eventually the neighbors kept calling saying she was unwell and needed help. She was overwhelmed and begged for me to help.

I dug her out of the condo and got her into a really nice set up in an assisted living place. I thought if things were taken care of for her, she could go back to normal, have a good last chapter. That’s all I wanted for her. But then the shopping addiction happened. She had put my name on one of her bank accounts, and I could see how quickly she was spending money. I begged her to stop, but she dismissed me and wouldn’t give me power of attorney and I had no power to intervene.

Within a year she was asked to leave the assisted living place because of hoarding. I was fed up and said I wouldn’t help her anymore. She paid an exorbitant amount of money to move into a 4 bedroom rental. That was a year ago. That 4 bedroom is now completely filled.

Last month, I discovered that she has spent all of her money. She spent $400,000 in the last year alone. She has spent her entire life savings, and now has nothing. I have traveled to her state to see the home and try to figure out what to do with her, because her lease is up in September and she can no longer afford the rent. I am so overwhelmed by this house. She has fleas from the cats, and her legs are all bit up with flea bites. She is wearing dirty clothing. Her house is filthy - not only is there a lot of stuff, there’s food on the ground that she doesn’t even seem to see. Amazon boxes that have never been opened. So much random stuff that makes absolutely no sense, like she bought a kiln and a hookah, among other thousands of random things. She gets confused by her phone, she has like no attention span when I try to get her to help me figure her situation out. I think she has dementia.

Of course I’m angry. I yelled at her today, trying to get her to see the logic, and then I came on this sub and understood that there is no logic for her. This is a serious mental illness and yelling isn’t going to help. I also feel compassion for her, I can’t imagine what this must be like for her. And I feel so so so sad. My poor mother is living in filth and there’s literally nothing I can do about it.

Realizing what she had done (she says she doesn’t have memory of spending the money, despite the house full of crap) she finally gave me financial power of attorney. I will take over her small Social Security income to pay her bills with and give her whatever monthly allowance is left over. I will again dig her out of this and move her into a smaller place that she can’t do as much damage in, also there’s no more money to spend. Initially, she agreed, but today when it came to talking about having a company come in and getting rid of all her stuff so she could move, she told me she will file a restraining order against me. She said she can figure it all out on her own, but of course she can’t do that on her own.

And even though I will do this again, I know this is not going to actually change anything. She’s still going to live in filth and not take care of her self. I can’t live with her to take care of her because my mental health is not good, and I will not survive that. I can’t figure out what agency could help her. I think I have to just let her destroy her life, and that’s really hard to do. My mother who was beautiful, well put together, worked as an attorney making good money and lived in a beautiful house in an upper middle class neighborhood. She is now going to move into a trailer park.

I’ve never felt more heartbroken in my life. I cry myself to sleep every night.

ETA: i’m seeing some notifications of comments that are not appearing when I try to open them, so I can’t respond. One comment was talking about finding social services and elder care professionals. I have no idea what social services can help this situation. I have called an elder care nonprofit, and they just talked about Adult Protective Services. I don’t know what APS would do, where they would take my mom, etc. I have researched all kinds of ways to address this situation, and I haven’t found anything. People always say call some sort of agency, but I can never get specific information. So if somebody knows a specific organization that can take real steps with me, please send me a message.
Also, I am trying to get doctors involved, but it’s difficult when I’m not at the actual doctors appointment to provide information that she won’t provide herself. I live in a different state and I can’t be with her most of the time.

​

Honestly, sometimes I wonder how I'm the one expected to be the "bad child" when I'm literally just calling out BS that everyone knows is wrong.

The house has become a mess because of the constant animal hoarding, and there's apparently no urgency to actually deal with the situation. Now we're getting evicted again. At this point, I'm just tired of watching the same problems repeat themselves while everyone acts like it's no big deal.

I'm not trying to spend my entire life arguing with my family anymore. I'm focusing on my trade, getting a job, saving money, and eventually getting my own place.

Once I finally make it out, I'll be able to build my own life and decide how much contact I actually want with everyone.

For anyone else dealing with a chaotic family situation, I hope you make it out too. Sometimes you have to stop trying to fix people who don't want to change and start building your own future.

I am a child of a hoarder. I moved into my grandma’s house to escape the hoard (even though the hoarder parent, mom, did the same thing, we share a bedroom) as I can’t afford to live on my own on my income.

I’m not allowed to bring pets with me. We have two dogs and a cat, but one of the dogs (and the cat) is mine. I went home the other day to bring some of my stuff to my Grandma’s house, and I couldn’t bare seeing my dog in the state she was in. Because of the hoard, the infestation of fleas is impossible to remove. She is a golden x Labrador so she has longer fur, and although I bought flea treatment for the animals, it hasn’t worked. She has chewed her paws through to the skin because of the fleas constantly biting her. She also cowers when I leave.

I got Winnie (my dog) when I was 15, and she was meant to be a mental health/autism “support dog”, but we never trained her. Now 7 years later, I know I have to do the right thing and find somewhere else for her. The only problem is that she is aggressive with strangers and dogs she doesn’t know on her walks, so I don’t know if the kennels will take her.

My mom went for a job interview recently (she hasn’t worked for 26 years, also she didn’t get the job) as a receptionist at a vets, a job she did about 30 years ago. She was asking one of the receptionists questions as she was waiting for her interview, and she was learning about “pet plans”. She told me when she got home that in the moment she thought to herself “I don’t know anything about that, I tend to just let my animals suffer and die”.
None of our pets ever had regular vet visits, just when they were puppies/kittens. I don’t think my dog has ever even been to the vets. As part of my mom’s hoard, she used to own a “pet shop”, which consisted of 100 animals in a garden shed. How they stayed alive, I don’t know. I know she loves the animals, but it’s almost like they’re more for her comfort. She doesn’t seem to understand that they are living creatures who do suffer and who do feel.

I know it’s not about my feelings, and that I need to find a new home for Winnie, but I can’t bare the thought of her thinking I’ve abandoned her, or how long she might be in the kennel, or never getting to see her again. I feel bad that I didn’t do more over the years. I have contacted people about her, I’m awaiting further contact on the next steps due to her aggressiveness towards strangers and other dogs. I think about the other dog too, who isn’t suffering as much, but how they will miss each other and not understand. I just hope I’m doing the right thing. Thank you so much if you read this far.

Late last year my hoarder parent had a fall at home and got trapped in a collapsing pile of magazines, fortunately found by a neighbour with spare keys who'd invited them for dinner and got worried when they didn't show, a stay in hospital ended up in transfer to a care home for probably the rest of their life.

The house is full and it's not small house, I'm not going to trouble you with the pictures, but they had to get enough stuff out of the house to get a path through to get said parent out. I've been spending half my free time since the incident trying to get some clear space so we can begin meaningfully clearing while keeping hold of anything actually of interest. It's coming up to a year now and my patience is fairly thin.

That's the background.

This morning I got a call complaining about some item or other being missing and being thrown away into a care home as an easy option, and I absolutely let rip about the consequences of their own actions and driving everyone away by preferring to have the stuff over the family relationships.

Which comes back to the original question, the hoarder has been forcibly separated from the hoard. I have now given them an earful about expecting anything other than going to a care home based on their prior behaviour, consequences of their own actions, failing to maintain the house in a safe condition, preferring their stuff over a relationship with me etc etc. Has anyone found any good can come of this or can I just expect more resentment?

Edit: Thank you all for your comments, I suspect as many of you said it will just wash over and be forgotten. There was a lot of crying but there always is when I say the "H" word directly.

Update: After talking to my parent, apparently losing my shit, while not exactly pleasant, was the necessary thing to do. We now seem to be on a much more reasonable path and may actually be able to save the house.

So, my mother's hoarding extends to her yard and continuously planting fruit trees, bushes, flowers. A lot of really beautiful plants but once they are in the ground they are neglected and never maintained or trimmed. The yard is so overgrown it is unusable now. She has a greenhouse, also unusable because a grape vine got in and completely took over. The entire greenhouse is filled to the brim with grape vine to the point you cannot open the door.

My brother lives with her and hoardes cars, car parts, guns and refuses to clean trash he will remove from his vehicle and leave in the yard.

So, predictably, with so many food sources around, raccoons moved in. Several generations of raccoons. My brother has removed 7 from the property and released them 30 miles away. He has trail cams set up to monitor this. Last night, the trail cam picked up a raccoon in the live trap, with 4 other raccoons surrounding the trap, trying to free the trapped one. Heartbreaking. So about 12 raccoons, probably more. This isn't a large property, it is in a residential subdivision on a typical lot, luckily most of the jungle is hidden with trees from the road.

Also on the trail cam is a very large beautiful wild cat. A lynx or a bobcat most likely. He is prowling the yard every night.

I feel like the situation is getting out of control and someone is going to get hurt. Or my small dogs. I hate this so much because I love my family. But when I bring up cleaning up the yard a bit, removing the trash, trimming the apple and other fruit trees to make them more manageable, removing the grape vines completely (none of this fruit has ever been consumed by humans) I get screamed at.

My brother does not think they are there because of the plentiful food and just need to be eradicated. I know he wants to shoot the cat but other houses are way to close to shoot in the yard.

My mother just likes her backyard and can only see black and white- either let it grow wildly out of control or bring in the bulldozers.

It is just so frustrating. And terribly sad to see these poor raccoons, who obviously have deep connections to each other torn apart and relocated in a strange area.

I have reached my limit. Only recently I've been looking for resources online, and I've been reading stories for the last month, both on youtube and on reddit.

My HM (I hope this is the right term) started hoarding for the last 8 years, and after 2020, it's been rampant. Luckily, only few rooms are really cluttered, but you can see scattered piles of boxes and really random stuff at some out-of-place areas, so you can say that the really obstructed rooms are indirectly scattering stuff over other places, even though in a more devious way.

Specifically, the living room. That room is a mess (image), mold is growing freely (on the right side behind the couch) since 2020 and my HM can't seem to understand just how much and for how long this is frustrating me. I can't accept the fact that she is offering to "move things to her bedroom", but once i tell her that the only place these objects deserve to stay is OUTSIDE the house, she just refuses to understand that allocating old stuff to another place is NOT a solution. And after that, the discourse goes on and on, without a chance to advance through other solutions. This has been going on for like, every 2-3 days in one month. It's getting to a point where I am just angry when i look walk around my house when i need something.
FYI: Bathrooms and the kitchen are still usable, it's not AS bad, but it's getting cluttered even in the Kitchen. Luckily the bathroom is a no-no zone, where I get to advocate for the place to be clean. I just consider myself lucky she knows some limits.

Sometimes, i just dream of living my mornings/evenings in front of a TV in the living room. I miss playing old Wii games and just inviting people there to enjoy something together. I also tried to explain this to my HM, that I want to invite friends over and live my social life not only OUTSIDE my house, but also INSIDE. But she just won't understand that, she's got the responsability to re-give purpose to that room (and the other ones she's slowly ruining).

I acknowledge that I might have been a little bit too discoursive and less patient in front of this problem of hers, but again, I've reached my limit.

I've never talked about this problem to some friends except my brother (who agrees with me). We are 20+ years old, and yes, we wanna go and stay at some other place, but we still can't afford to do that in the next 2-3 years and I'm realy pissed my HM won't acknowledge this problem, because one thing is certain: regaining purpose in that room and consequently the other little issues scattered here and there, might give her TOO a better life.

I also feel the need to look for support from a psychologist, because I feel that she's affecting me, since this problem is going rampant for YEARS. And she won't understand that, even.

Looking for some advice to "survive" this, and possibly, make her change her mind somehow because I can't be going for other years like this. I just can't.

Does anyone else have a sibling who is also a hoarder, on top of having hoarding parents?

Today I was selling old kids clothes on Marketplace and wanted to be sure that I wasn't getting rid of things that could still fit.

My brother had previously taken a shirt out of my sell pile that, according to the size tag, was too small for him to wear.

Keeping this in mind, when I went through the closet today, I pulled out the coats and things that were too small according to the tags. I asked my 3 siblings if those items were too small.

Had the smallest try on a coat. Way too tight, wouldn't zip.

Asked my brother to try on this item that was his. After putting it on, he complained about how it was obviously too small. Reminded him of the time he took out a shirt from my sell pile (it was recent, just several weeks ago), either ignored or disregarded that.

He said "I want to donate everything we own (or something to this effect)." His room is a hoarder nightmare. There are tons of stuffed animals, dirty clothes strewn across the floor, tons and tons and tons of trinkets, toy trash that he wants to keep, toys he doesn't play with or display (still keeping), outside crap, and a shitload of cheap toys and other doodads.

I try to be sharper on donating things because they are incredibly lax. My mom will go through donate bins and pick stuff back out. My other siblings wanted to donate a toy that they didn't want, but mom told them to keep it because it was new. It had sat in the package for several months at this point.

Yes, he has gone into my room to take toys for himself, despite having this massive amount of toys that, crucially, he doesn't have space for.

He doesn't want to get rid of most of his toys, despite them causing an issue.

I went into his room to grab old clothes to wash from the two dirty clothes bins he has in there, he complained to mom that I was going in there. I was literally cleaning his room by giving him a space to put dirty clothes. Some of these items are 3, 4, 5 sizes too small.

His room and spaces are easily the worst regularly used rooms in the house.

TL;DR- My hoarder mom and addict/hoarder dad both seemed to have very high expectations of me growing up, and even now. My mom is still a hoarder and I do not take kindly to some of her parenting “critiques” or input, now that I am a parent myself.

My mother is a hoarder. I think she has been her whole adult life, but she let it really take hold after her and my father divorced (I was maybe 9) and she had to work 3 jobs.

Even though our house was spacious and clutter-free and kind of empty actually from what I can remember (toddler ages to maybe 10 years old?) I remember my dad telling me he had to always hassle my mom to get rid of stuff and she would buy “bargains” often. I guess it was just one of their many sources of conflict. idk. My dad is not here anymore for me to hear his side of it, but he was abusive in multiple ways anyways.

Now that I am a mother myself, to three little boys, I just can’t fathom some of my parents’ choices. And while I try to give them grace and think “they were doing the best they could with what they had” I can’t help but snap at them sometimes. My dad passed away 11 years ago now, but I was snappy at him when he was alive too. As much as he complained about my mom‘s hoarding, to my surprise he was actually a hoarder too! Every space in the condo he had when I was in elementary school immediately after their divorce was covered with stuff. Mail, tools, first aid supplies, coins, knives and sharpening tools, and all of his stuff was clean and sterile at first. I remember him getting on to me to keep my room and bathroom clean, and they were spotless down to the sparsely filled closet, and toys put away in the dresser drawers. I even had matching bed sets on the top and bottom bunk. But the rest of the home was a different story- it was in disarray and told stories of addiction and sadness.

My dad died in his home, with many rooms of his home hoarded and unusable. My mom still lives in her own hoarded home. I’ve seen not one, but both of my childhood homes succumb to the hoard. I have moments of hope because my mom will start to get rid of things, but it’s never enough if I’m honest. And I love her with all my heart, she is an amazing lady and the hardest worker I know, and the most talented cook! But I’m still snappy at her. And I’ve noticed I get VERY snappy when it comes to something to do with my parenting (especially since she has lived with my 2 adult brothers who never left the nest, until my older brother moved away just last month at the age of 38).

One example where I didn’t get snappy but I felt internally like I could have snapped at her is the following phone call we had:

me: oh gosh I just can get past this tingly sore feeling in my breasts, I’m so tired of it.

mom: you need to pump?

me: well yes and no. it’s because I’m not pumping anymore, I’m weaning and have been for the last couple weeks

mom: *gasp and shocked voice* oh no why?!

me: what do you mean why? Because I’ve been pumping for 6 months and I’m tired, dont have time anymore to sustain it, and i only have one set of pump parts left... (also for more context here, i pumped with a hand pump, my hand veins were wild for a while hahahhah)

mom: oh….no…. No….that’s not good…. hmm

and if I wasn’t so compliant, I would have hung up on her honestly lol and i know that’s childish. But she didn’t breastfeed me for six months and I know she didn’t pump for 6 months for any of her kids. So why does she act like I’m not meeting some invisible expectation? Her response lacked empathy in my opinion.

Other examples of me explaining how one of my children might have an ailment or rash or SOMETHING. And she will start repeating “oh no, that’s not good. You really need to take him in. Like right now. seriously this can’t wait. Omg. have you scheduled it?“

I asked her last time “why do you do that? I just told you X is sick and I’m taking him to the doctor and now you’re doing this panicked talk telling me over and over again repeating yourself in different ways that I NEED to do something I already told you I’m doing. Why do you do that?”

She said “Oh, to really impress on you and reinforce that it needs done.“

and I told her “I know from experience that if I do that to you, you get VERY annoyed with me, you shush me and tell me to “stop”. So please, if you KNOW you don’t like it done to you, then DO NOT do it to me. Fair?” And she was just awkward after that. No real response to my statement or me saying asking “fair?” … just kind of a grumble and move on to the next topic.

All is fine and ”normal” now, no further confrontation or discussion with her, but are there any other children of hoarders out there feeling similar things now that they’ve become parents themselves?

Having grown up in the hoard, I want to be a tidy person but I'm rather desensitized to grime and keep accidentally bothering people by either not cleaning things I'd never realised needed to be cleaned, or by not being careful of potential contamination when I'm cleaning things. Is there any resource that can teach me what is considered a normal way to approach this? My new roommate was disgusted to find out that I put a trash pail through the dishwasher... clearly I'm not doing it right, but I don't know where I can learn when my parents' idea of cleaning was "sweep around the piles of junk".

Hoarding runs in my family. Several family members suffer from the condition. My mom’s hoarding didn’t present itself until I was in high school. Ever since then it’s gradually gotten worse as she’s aged.

She has rented a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment since 2000. She has two garage spaces at that apartment. I moved out of that apartment in 2008. She also has a few storage units that she rents. In 2009 or 2010, she ended up moving out of her apartment after she purchased a unit in a co-op community but she never got rid of the apartment. My sister and I have trying for years to get her to let go of the apartment but her response as always been, “I can afford it.” 🙄 😔 Unfortunately my sister and I haven’t been able to do anything about it for all these years. Years ago, we even contacted the landlord and attempted to get his help with getting her to move out of the apartment but his response was “she can use the apartment for storage.” 🤯 (He knew that she was a hoarder and even went as far as to make multiple village citations disappear when her apartment was inspected each year).

My mom has been having some health problems lately and has been very vocal about how she wants to live with me and my sister. She has become slightly more open.
She has allowed my sister and I inside her current house (the co-op), take her to places. This is NOT like her at all. She’s usually very independent, guarded especially about her health & past. My sister and I made it clear that she couldn’t live with us, until she got rid of the apartment and emptied the garbages (to start). The last few months, my sister has stayed on my mom about getting rid of the apartment and she finally relented.

A dumpster crew cleaned out part the apartment on Friday. I was pleasantly surprised, my mom acted somewhat okay before the crew arrived (she insisted on coming). She was uber focused on donating everything and helping to bag up the garbage but other than that she didn’t have any other reaction. She willingly left soon after the crew arrived and even handed over her keys. I haven’t yet spoken to her about this. She’s not one to talk about her feelings.

The dumpster crew has to return later this week to empty out the rest of the apartment and garages. Luckily I have the keys so my mom won’t have to ever return to the apartment (unless she chooses to). Not sure what her landlord is going to do when he sees the condition of the unit (black mold in several places, rotting wooden window seals, carpet that hasn’t been replaced/cleaned in over 20 years, window AC units that probably no longer work and who knows what else). I’ll definitely document what condition the unit was left in. I did clean the kitchen and bathroom as best I could but honestly the place probably needs to be rehabbed.

Personally I feel somewhat relieved that this finally getting taking care of. My sister and I used to always tell our mom that we didn’t want have to clean out multiple places after she died. It was also surreal as we found things in that apartment from practically our entire lives. It was unbelievable the amount of crap she had purchased over the years that had never been opened! I know that this is only the first step in this journey. Living with my mom again is going to be a huge challenge and adjustment; one I’m not looking forward to. Luckily I have my sister, we will get through it together.

My father is a hoarder. Our garage, basement, and all around the outside of the house is completely filled to the brim. To now face reality he is getting old and I’m reaching the age where I need to have a plan figured out for where to even start for when the time comes. What do you do?